In Trump criminal case, Manhattan DA asks for gag order before trial
NEW YORK — Manhattan prosecutors Monday asked the judge overseeing the criminal case against Donald Trump to prohibit the former president from attacking witnesses or exposing jurors’ identities.
The requests, made in filings by the Manhattan district attorney’s office, noted Trump’s “longstanding history of attacking witnesses, investigators, prosecutors, judges, and others involved in legal proceedings against him.”
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In outlining a narrowly crafted gag order, the office hewed closely to the terms of a similar order upheld by a federal appeals court in Washington in another of Trump’s criminal cases.
The gag order in the Manhattan case, if the judge approves it, would bar Trump from “making or directing others to make” statements about witnesses concerning their role in the case. The district attorney, Alvin Bragg, also asked that Trump be barred from commenting on prosecutors on the case — other than Bragg himself — as well as court staff members.
Although Bragg carved himself out of the gag-order request, he has received the brunt of the attacks from Trump and his supporters. In an affidavit released Monday, the head of his security detail listed some of the worst of the dozens of attacks directed at Bragg last year, including racial slurs and death threats.
In a separate filing, Bragg placed a special emphasis on the protection of jurors. His prosecutors asked that Trump be barred from publicly revealing their identities. And although Trump and his legal team are allowed to know the jurors’ names, Bragg asked that their addresses be kept secret from the former president.
If the judge, Juan Merchan, accepts the restrictions, he would be just the latest judge to impose a gag order on Trump. There was an order in the Washington case, a federal case that involves accusations that Trump plotted to overturn the 2020 election. And the judge in Trump’s civil fraud trial that recently concluded ordered Trump not to comment on court staff members.
In a federal trial in Florida in which Trump is accused of mishandling classified documents, the special counsel, Jack Smith, is also seeking to protect witnesses. The prosecutors have vehemently opposed an attempt by Trump’s lawyers to include the names of about 24 potential witnesses in a public filing, claiming that the witnesses could face harassment or intimidation. The prosecutors have even opened a separate criminal investigation of threats made on social media against one of the witnesses.
The Manhattan criminal case was the first of Trump’s four indictments to be filed and is scheduled to go to trial March 25. Last year, the district attorney’s office accused Trump of 34 felonies, saying he had orchestrated a cover-up of a potential sex scandal with a porn actor that could have hindered his 2016 presidential campaign.
Trump’s lawyers will probably oppose the gag order and could appeal it if Merchan adopts it. A lawyer for Trump, Todd Blanche, declined to comment on the prosecutors’ proposal, saying the defense’s court papers spoke for themselves.
Steven Cheung, a spokesperson for Trump’s campaign, slammed Bragg’s request for a “restrictive gag order, which if granted, would impose an unconstitutional infringement on President Trump’s First Amendment rights, including his ability to defend himself, and the rights of all Americans to hear from President Trump.”
The former president has reveled in public attacks on his former fixer, Michael Cohen, who is now one of Bragg’s key witnesses. Cohen paid $130,000 in hush money to the porn actor to silence her story of an affair with Trump and was later reimbursed by Trump.
The case hinges on the reimbursement to Cohen. Trump, prosecutors say, knew that his company had falsified internal records, referring to the reimbursement as “legal expenses” that were part of a “retainer agreement.”
Bragg has cast Trump’s actions as election interference, arguing that the cover-up led to the withholding of important information from voters shortly before they headed to the polls.
But in their own filing Monday, Trump’s lawyers asked that the prosecutors be barred from asserting that their client had sought to influence the election, saying the argument was irrelevant.
Bragg, the defense wrote, was saying that “efforts by a candidate to prevent adverse publicity about himself during a campaign equals an attempt to defraud.” They said the argument was not based on the law and “is an extraordinary perversion of our election system and the First Amendment.”
Trump’s defense team also asked that the judge prevent Cohen from testifying.
“Michael Cohen is a liar,” the former president’s lawyers wrote, accusing Cohen of perjury in Trump’s civil fraud trial and saying that his public statements indicated that he planned to lie again.
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